Tutorial: Putting Wings On

It's a cute, fun, and simple edit that anyone can do. You can download the Fairy Wings Brush by Lileya for free HERE for Elements or CS. Once you do that, double click on the downloaded brush icon. Your program should automatically open up. Otherwise, simply follow the download instructions for YOUR specific software.

Now select the image you want to use for this edit. Here are my two samples above. I selected these two because of the background difference. One is much darker. The other has a lot going on, a lot of distraction for the eye; therefore, it would be a great challenge for me to use the Fairy Wing brush on that specific image. So I decided to make it work for both. Alas, this is what I did:

I selected one of the many brush options depending on the position of my object, aka my daughter and how she is standing. I then selected the proper opacity of the brush as well as the proper size--also depending on the size of my object.

I then selected the color I wanted. I chose two different colors for each image and based them on the colors in my daughter's clothing.

Finally BEFORE I added the brush effect to my image, I added another layer. In the past I would always forget to do this. I ended up having to undo and undo as far back as I could, which was simply time consuming and ridiculous. So adding a layer every time you are going to do something new is an easy way to track yourself.

So I added a layer and then clicked once and added my wing effect. Oooooo, pretty......

However, something clearly doesn't look right, right? LOL. Obviously. Select the erase tool while still being selected in the same layer [not the background layer], and then start to erase the parts that should clearly NOT have the wings in the front, like the face, the front, the arms, the shoulders, the hair, etc. Just keep it behind.

Done!

Note: That one "blue" winged image I had to click the brush effect TWICE to get a deeper, sharper effect for the wing. For the pink one I only had to click it once. So it depends on the image, which makes since. You can also add texture, like bokeh! That would also make it very pretty! Have fun!

 -  Shaunna

from Captivus Living.

And don't forget to check out my current photo challenge going on now!